Stuck in the Mud

Well, I already knew that last week was going to be a rough week at school, but I had no idea what else was in store for the Varner family. Our weeks are pretty calm at our house. The most drama we deal with is my day at work (not a great class this year) and Allie's biting at Carmen's (which she still does). Last week my school had parent conferences on Tuesday night and Thursday from 4-7. Not only did I have to stay at school forever, I wasn't going to get to spend a lot of time with Allie or Jarod. Monday and Tuesday went pretty well. Wednesday started off with my shoe getting stuck in the mud when I dropped Allie off and I should have known then that my day was not going to go well.

Even with my behavior child in the office most of the day, it still wasn't going very well. I picked up Allie at 4:00 and headed home. I live 20 minutes from school and I go through a lot of signal lights on my way home. I didn't have to stop at one signal light all the way to my house. I should have known then that something was about to go wrong. Allie and I pulled up to the driveway and I couldn't get the garage door to open. I thought that was a little strange, but just drove around front and went the front door. I tried to turn on a lamp and it wouldn't come on. Then I tried the kitchen light and it wouldn't come on. I finally realized that we had no power. I called Jarod and we both realized that some how the electric company did not get our bill (that is very much a mystery, if you know Jarod at all, he gets our bills in on time). We did get a pink slip, but Jarod thought they just hadn't received our bill before they sent it out (we learned a lesson on that one, always call and check!). So he got on the phone with the electric company and paid the bill but know one would help us get our power turned on. They said it would take 24-48 hours! Then we had to decide what to do. Do we stay at a hotel or go to my friend Michelle's? We also had to get all of our food moved from the refrigerator and freezer. We had decided to stay with Michelle until she called me and told me that her husband and dog had just been attacked by a pit bull(both our fine, thank goodness). Then we had to find a hotel that had a kitchen so we could store our food there. Not only was it stressful that we had to stay in a hotel, but I had conferences the next night until 7.

Thursday was not great at school but my conferences went really well. Jarod had called around noon to say that our power was back on so I couldn't wait to get home and spend some time with Jarod before he went out of town on Saturday for work. I got home around 7:45, hugged Allie for a little bit and then it was time to get her ready for bed. Jarod and I started up the stairs with her and he saw water spots on the floor. Then he looked up and noticed that we had a huge water spot on our ceiling above our stairs. When we got to the top of our stairs, it looked like our ceiling was about to cave in. Needless to say the rest of the night was not spent cuddling and watching some tv. We put Allie down and I have no idea how she slept through the yelling back and forth from the attic to the stairs. We had a leak in our attic and Jarod had to get up there and try to get the water up before our ceiling collapsed. We had to get our air conditioner turned off so it would stop leaking. Needless to say there were a lot of tears on my part and I really lost it when our ceiling started to come down. Thank goodness for parents and my uncle's advice on what to do. Then we called our State Farm agent (a close friend) and he calmed me down.

So, we need a whole new AC unit and we have lived without air since Thursday night. Wouldn't be quite so bad if our bedrooms weren't upstairs. Jarod left for North Carolina on Saturday morning and I headed to my parents house. I just got back tonight and hopefully by this time tomorrow I will have air!!! If not, I think I will be in a very bad mood. I'm so ready for Jarod to be home and for this drama to be over. I'm just very grateful that this didn't happen this week while Jarod was gone.





Allie in the box that we used to pack our food in.

















Our hole in the ceiling and our huge water spot!











The buckets we set up to catch the water from the ceiling. Sorry the picture is sideways. It wouldn't cooperate for me!